CANTO XXX
v. 1. The polar light.] The seven candlesticks.
v. 12. Come.] Song of Solomon, c. iv. 8.
v. 19. Blessed.] Matt. c. xxi. 9.
v. 20. From full hands.] Virg. Aen 1. vi. 884.
v. 97. The old flame.] Agnosco veteris vestigia flammae Virg. Aen. I. I. 23.
Conosco i segni dell’ antico fuoco.
Giusto de’ Conti, La Bella Mano.
v. 61. Nor.] “Not all the beauties of the terrestrial Paradise; in which I was, were sufficient to allay my grief.”
v. 85. But.] They sang the thirty-first Psalm, to the end of the eighth verse.
v. 87. The living rafters.] The leafless woods on the Apennine.
v. 90. The land whereon no shadow falls.] “When the wind blows, from off Africa, where, at the time of the equinox, bodies being under the equator cast little or no shadow; or, in other words, when the wind is south.”
v. 98. The ice.] Milton has transferred this conceit, though scarcely worth the pains of removing, into one of his Italian poems, son.